Dawn's Healthy Living Blog

Eating for Heart Health and Athletic Performance

May 19, 2010

Heart disease is the number one killer of both men and women in America. Risk factors such as lack of physical activity, obesity, smoking and poor diet can be greatly reduced by proper lifestyle choices. The statistics are startling. Approximately 2,400 Americans die of cardiovascular disease (CVD) each day. On average there is one death every 37 seconds from CVD and every 40 seconds someone in the United States has a stroke.

It is estimated by the CDC that in 2010, heart disease will cost the United States $316.4 billion. This total includes the cost of health care services, medications, and lost productivity.

What is “Ideal” Cardiovascular Health? The following is based on the American Heart Associations latest guidelines.

Physical Activity:	at least 150 minutes per week of moderate exercise like walking briskly, or 75 minutes per week of vigorous activity like jogging or cycling
Smoking:	Don’t !!!
Body Mass Index:	less than 25 for adults
Total Cholesterol:	less than 200 mg/dl
Blood Pressure:	less than 120/80 mm/Hg
Fasting Plasma Glucose:	less than 100 mg/dl
Healthy Diet Score	4-5 components (see below)

Components of the AHA’s Healthy Diet

• sodium: under 1,500 mg per day
• fruits and vegetables: at least 4 1/2 cups per day
• fish: preferably oily fish two 3 1/2 oz. servings per week
• whole grains: at least three 1 oz. servings per day
• nuts, legumes and seeds: at least 4 servings per week
• processed meats: preferably none, but not more than two servings per week
• saturated fat: less than 7% of total calories
• sweetened beverages: less than 36 oz. per week

Exercise Does Not Give You a Free Pass to Eat Junk Food

Exercise is certainly key to reducing your risk for heart disease. Howeve,r I have noticed that some people who exercise regularly think that lots of exercise can negate poor food choices. I am sorry to say that this is not the case. I know too many people who are relatively young, who are at a healthy weight, good athletes and who have high cholesterol and have been prescribed cholesterol lowering drugs.

Research shows that by drastically reducing the amount of saturated fat and cholesterol in one’s diet and increasing the amount of fiber rich foods can positively affect your cholesterol profile without the side affects of cholesterol reducing drugs and will provide other health benefits such as a reduced risk of some types of cancer and diabetes. It seems that by dialing in your diet and eliminating foods that contain saturated fat and cholesterol (pastries, candy, and foods that contain animal fat and protein) and increasing fiber rich foods (whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds) has many advantages.

There are a number of researchers, such as Dr. Dean Ornish, president and founder of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research institute (www.pmri.org), who have published studies in peer-reviewed medical journals showing that heart disease can be reversed with a low fat plant based diet, exercise and reducing stress.

Reward your body properly after a workout, with rest and lots of foods that are plant based, and unprocessed. These foods will help you recover, keep you lean and protect your heart.

So indulge in all of the fruit, veggies, nuts, legumes, whole grains and soy products you want while keeping your sodium levels under the recommended 1500 milligrams and watch your athletic performance and your cardiovascular health profile improve!

Awesome Abdominals

April 20, 2010

The abdominal area or the core seems to be the number one concern for most of us who workout. We want a strong core to help reduce the risk of injuries, enhance athletic performance, improve posture and we want flat abs so we look good in our skinny jeans.

To better understand what needs to happen to create awesome abdominals, let's first look at some current beliefs about abdominal training that need some serious updating.

Old School Ideas De-bunked

1. Performing lots of crunches will not create a solid stable, healthy back or reduce the amount of fat on your abdomen. Our abdominal muscles are designed to work when we are kneeling, standing and moving. Gary Grey, a well know physical therapist and personal trainer educator, says “when your butt is on the floor, you are not working your core.”
2. Please don’t consider those supplements on TV that claim they produce weight loss and will give you the six pack of your dreams. All of these products are a rip off.
3. You do not need to buy a specific piece of equipment to train your abs and those machines in health club with a big weight stack are not going to do the trick on their own and can sometimes even be harmful.
4. When performing abdominal/core exercises you should “draw your belly button to your spine” or “pull in your tummy.” Trying to isolate and work your “lower abs” or what is known as your transverse abdominus (TVA), is not the panacea we once thought. Your TVA works in concert with other core muscles to provide stability. The only time you ever work this muscle in isolation is when you cough, laugh or throw up.
5. Trying to create a flexible spine actually creates an unstable spine and lots of spinal rotation especially when done with resistance can hurt your back over time and will have zero effect on reducing the fat around your middle. Current research shows that we are much better off with a stable spine not a flexible spine. The spine is not designed for a lot of rotation. It’s job is to stabilize the trunk so the hips and shoulders can work. You want a strong stable spine and flexible and powerful shoulders and hips.

 

Other Core Muscles to Consider

You can’t really address the core without talking about the shoulder girdle and the muscles of the hips. Your core muscles are designed to stabilize your spine while you move your shoulders and hips. So doing hip and shoulder strengthening exercises will help you obtain awesome abdominals. The body does not work in isolation, everything needs to work together.

Abdominal Bracing and Neutral Position

Before we begin you need to understand the concept of abdominal bracing and neutral position. Remember when I mentioned that “drawing in your abs” is considered old school? Bracing is new school. What is bracing?

Bracing: First activate your pelvic floor muscles by performing a kegal, then tighten your abs like you are bearing down to eliminate. You should not be pushing your abs out. Remember to breathe! Sometimes people concentrate so much they hold their breath.

Neutral Spine: Maintain your neutral back position. You don’t want to arch, round your upper back or flatten your low back and your chin head should be up and relaxed. Keep your back in this neutral position. You use abdominal bracing to maintain neutral back position. Neutral position enables your body to work at it’s best. Hip muscles fire, abdominals fire, legs and shoulders fire….your whole body can move strong this way.

Examples of Effective Core Training

There are many exercises to train your abdominal or core muscles. So say good bye to doing hundreds of boring crunches! Some crunches are good but they should be sprinkled in only occasionally.

The first thing you can do is begin to practice bracing your abdominals during your regular workout or when you have to lift something heavy.

Below I have listed a few exercises to get you started. I am giving you basics without a lot in the way of progressions. I will write another article on how to turn up the intensity with these exercises.

Bird Dog

• Balance on all fours
• Perform abdominal brace
• Lift your left arm and right leg and hold for 3 seconds while keeping your hips level
• Repeat other side
• Do 2 sets of 15 to start

Front Plank

• Balance on your elbows and toes
• Maintain abdominal brace
• Keep neck in line with the back
• Hold for 20-60 seconds
• Do 2-3 sets

Side Plank

• Roll onto your side and hold your self up on your elbow and foot while keeping your hips up
• Maintain abdominal brace
• Keep neck in line with the spine
• If this position is challenging, balance on your knee instead of your foot
• Hold for 15-30 seconds each side
• Do 2-3 sets

Bridge

• Lie on your back with knees bent
• Lift hips, keep gluteals contracted
• Maintain abdominal brace
• Slowly lift and lower hips while keeping knees from caving in or out
• Do 20-25 repetitions
• Do 2-3 sets

Abdominal Crunch

• Lie on the floor with knees bent
• Place hands under your low back
• Keep your spine in neutral position
• Keep chin in a neutral position, avoid jutting it forward; you can support your head with one hand if your neck becomes tense
• Lift shoulders up and try and create a lot of tension in your abdominals using your brace
• Hold for a count of 3 and then return to the floor
• Repeat 15-30 times
• Do 2-3 sets

Notice that there is not a lot of movement at your spine but you are feeling a lot of tension in your abdominals.

The Importance of Nutrition and Aerobic Exercise

The other two important components to awesome abdominals is diet and aerobic exercise. You can do the perfect core training regime but unless you eat a low calorie nutrient dense diet that contains lots of fiber you will keep your love handles and belt bulge.

The other component is aerobic exercise. People who have a high aerobic fitness level have less abdominal fat. Scientists are not sure why, but aerobic exercise is effective at utilizing abdominal fat. Abdominal fat increases our risk for metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, some types of cancer, diabetes, and liver disease.

A healthy diet and aerobic exercise are critical components to improving the appearance of your abdominal area.

I will address aerobic exercise and nutrition for Awesome Abdominals in some upcoming articles.

Good luck!

Eating Green and Healthy

February 21, 2010

Meatless Mondays is an international program, a non-profit initiative associated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The initiative promotes plant-based eating one day per week to reduce meat consumption by 15%, and in so doing, also improve personal health, and the health of the planet. If everyone in America gave up meat for one day every year it would be the equivalent of taking 20 million mid-size cars off the road for one year, saving 12 billion gallons of gasoline annually. As of 2006, forty calories of fossil fuel energy go into every calorie of U.S. feed lot beef (including manufacturing, transportation and storage). The United Nations report on Global Warming states that meat production produces more greenhouse gasses than all forms of transportation combined and pollutes 50% of our rivers and streams.

Along with reducing your carbon footprint, giving up meat for just one day per week will have a positive effect on your health. On average Americans eat 8 ounces of meat per day, 45% more than what the USDA recommends. Decreasing meat consumption can help decrease saturated fat and cholesterol intake which are major contributors to heart disease, stroke and some forms of cancer. Chronic preventable illnesses, including those associated with excessive saturated fat intake, cause 70% of all deaths in the United States. In 2007 alone Americans spent $1.7 trillion dollars on health care related to preventable illnesses.

The third reason to consider going meatless on Mondays is to reduce animal suffering. 99% of the animals Americans eat every day have lived a short miserable existence on a “factory farm.” They suffer in cramped, filthy conditions and have little or no exposure to the outdoors their entire lives.

You can find out more, including some great meatless recipes, by going to www.meatlessmonday.com. Perhaps some of our local restaurants would be willing to highlight some creatively prepared meatless specials every Monday?

So for the health of the planet, and to improve your own health, take the pledge and make Mondays meatless.

Changes

December 27, 2008

Change is on every one’s mind. “Change we can believe in.”

It is the beginning of a new year and it is the time of year most of us start thinking about changing aspects of our lives that will leave us feeling healthier, happier, prosperous, and more fulfilled.

Our country is facing incredible challenges and with those challenges some amazing opportunities. Our new president Barack Obama represents America’s deep desire for change. We want to be prosperous, safe, proud, to have opportunities and to be seen as a respected leader in the world again. But to be great as a country we need to be great as individuals. So the question is, who do we have to be as individuals in order to make our country prosperous and strong again and to make our communities and world a better place? I believe that we all have to take on being as physically, emotionally, and as spiritually strong as possible. As Mahatma Gandhi put it “we must be the change we want to see in the world.” What does that look like for you?

Try This Four Step Process….

1. Devote time to letting yourself dream a future for yourself. Be hopeful, dream big. What does your health look like? Your financial situation? Your idea of contribution to your family, community, and the world?

2. Begin to bring dreams into reality by writing them down and/or creating a vision board or journal with images that represent your dreams.

3. From your dreams create goals. Be as specific as you can.
They should be as tangible as possible, with a definite timeline. Write them down and put them in a place you can see daily.

3. Gather your resources. Be brutally honest with yourself. What strengths to you have that will support you in attaining your goals? Equally important is to identify what resources you need to help you. What new skills do you need to develop? Who are the people you need to call on to help you? What are the obstacles that will likely appear? What will be your strategy to overcome them? Write all of this out.

4. Now, execute consistently. Expect both success and setbacks along the way. Celebrate the successes and move on from the setbacks. Look at setbacks as the fertilizer for growth, we can gain allot of information from setbacks. The best part of achieving a dream is how the journey makes us grow. Enjoy the ride!